The garden had been there longer than anyone could remember. Elder Thornwood claimed his grandfather spoke of it, and his grandfather's grandfather before him. But no one had ever seen it directly - only in the peripheral vision of their dreams.
Mara discovered it on a Tuesday, which seemed wrong for something so extraordinary.
She had been walking home from the market, baskets heavy with vegetables and bread, when she noticed the hedge. It stood at the edge of town where the cobblestones gave way to wild grass, ordinary and unassuming. Except for the door.
The door was wooden, weathered gray, with iron hinges that had rusted to a beautiful bronze. It stood alone in the hedge, unattached to any wall, perfectly content to exist without explanation.
Mara approached it the way one approaches a sleeping dragon - slowly, with respect, and with an escape route firmly in mind.
The handle was warm when she touched it. Not hot - just warm, like skin in sunlight. She turned it.
The garden beyond was impossible.
Flowers bloomed in colors she had no names for. Trees grew sideways, their branches reaching into a sky that was somehow also ground. A fountain in the center burbled water that fell upward, catching light that came from nowhere and everywhere.
"Visitors," said a voice like wind through leaves. "How lovely. How terribly, terribly lovely."
A woman sat on a bench that may or may not have been there a moment before. She was old, or perhaps young - her face shifted when Mara tried to focus on it.
"I am the Keeper," the woman said. "I keep this garden. And I keep the dreams that grow here. Would you like to see them?"
Mara would. She very much would.
She stepped into the garden of forgotten dreams, and the door closed gently behind her.